Chilly Sunday

I slept through the night for a change and woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:30 AM. I took a shower and then warmed up a cup of coffee. I went in and filled in the Blog post from yesterday which took a l-o-n-g time but, then again, I had a big day yesterday, lol!

It was another gloomy, windy day. Temps are supposed to be falling throughout the day with more rain this afternoon and a chance of snow showers overnight. I'm not ready for this!!!

The winds (20-30 MPH, with occasional gust up to 45 MPH) were having one positive effect. The leaves were coming down everywhere!

I had to go out in the morning. I went to CVS and picked up some sour cream (for one chili topping) and mineral oil (for my cutting boards. You want to make sure you get food grade mineral oil, BTW). The checkout guy remarked, "Sour cream and mineral oil? That's a combination I don't often see!" I said, "Yeah, it makes a great dip!" He laughed and said, "I think I'll just stick with the potato chips!"

Back home, I watched a few taped shows until noon. As it did yesterday, the sun came out about then. I went outside to take some leaf pictures. By the time I got back in to post them, the sun had disappeared.

I turned the oven on 185 degrees F., got the chili in the Dutch oven out of the fridge and put it in. I want to slowly warm it up so I don't burn the bottom. Since I had just vacuumed yesterday, all I had to do today was to dust and then clean all the glass surfaces and the housecleaning was done.

About 1:30 PM, I mixed together the drop biscuits. I took one cup of all-purpose flour in a bowl and then added one teaspoon of baking powder, 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, two tablespoons plus one teaspoon of solid vegetable shortening, 1/4 cup plus one tablespoon of milk (I hate recipes like this), one cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese and the bacon bits from yesterday. I mixed it up well (the dough is supposed to be slightly sticky, BTW).

I put the chili on the stovetop and then preheated the oven to 400 degrees F. I oiled a pie plate and divided the dough into four equal parts. I put them into the pie plate and waited for Jake and Carla to show up. I was just dicing up some scallions for another chili topping when they did. Then I put the biscuits in the oven.

We chatted a bit and when the biscuits were done, Carla took them out to cool. She also put a pot of coffee on. When we were ready to eat, I plated the chili as Carla filled the other two topping bowls with some more shredded sharp cheddar cheese and some sour cream.

Then, we ate. It tasted pretty damn good! Both Jake and Carla seemed to like it (and they do know their chili), so I felt pretty good. Jake, (who doesn't like toppings on his chili; he's a purist, I guess) even had another bowl!

After eating, Jake insisted on washing everything up (even though I told him to just let it soak). They had brought me some of the beef stew Jake made last week, so we exchanged foods. I gave them some chili, a frozen container of my beef, mushroom barley soup and the remaining half of the sourdough loaf.

Then we played Scrabble. I am sad to say that Carla kicked both our butts, soundly! I mean she slaughtered us! They left about 6:00 PM.

All day long I had flocks of birds at the feeder (I think they sensed the upcoming storm). When I looked outside, both the feeder and the suet cage were empty, so I went out and refilled them. I came inside and changed clothes to relax for the rest of the evening.

Uh, oh... I turned on the TV and got nothing. I checked the phone... nothing! I checked the Internet... ditto. So, I used my cell phone and called Brighthouse repair. She said there was a complete outage in Redford and they were working on it (probably these damn winds) but they had not yet established an estimated time when repairs will be complete.

So, it looks like my favorite Sunday night shows are in jeopardy. I got my book and a drink and lay down in bed to see what happens... I left the TV on so I would know if and when the cable came back up. It came back on around 10:30 PM, but only for a minute or two. It did that off and on for a while until it was more annoying than anything else. So, I turned it off for the night and went to sleep.